Carl Ablett: After surgery hopefully I’ll be good to go again in two months

I AM not exactly writing this from my sick bed, but I am on the casualty list.

I had surgery on one of my knees on Tuesday and it looks like it’ll be around eight weeks before I get to play again.

I picked up an injury in the Wakefield game. I had a scan after that and since then I’ve been managing it and making do, but I played 80 minutes against Warrington two weeks ago and after that the knee basically gave up the ghost.

It locked up and since then I’ve had very limited range of movement so it had reached the point where I could not carry on.

I went to see a specialist on Thursday and he booked me straight in for an operation. With it being Easter the first available slot was on Tuesday, so I went in then.

It’s a quick process, I was in and out of the hospital in three or four hours. They put me to sleep, but it was a tidy-up rather than major surgery.

There were a few floating bits of bone and cartilage that needed removing and the surgeon shaved a two pence-sized piece of bone off my kneecap.

I had a full reconstruction of the same knee when I was about 19 and some cartilage trouble about four years ago, but it has had a bit of wear and tear.

Hopefully the operation has patched things up and I’ll be good to go in a couple of months. I will have to let the wounds heal, but I’m hoping it won’t be too long before I’m back in light training and I’ll probably be more or less straight into the gym.

The key thing is to stay as active as possible and keep myself in decent shape, so when the knee has recovered I’ll be ready to play straight away.

It is frustrating, but one of those things. I could have done without it after missing a lot of last year, but the plan is to be fresh and raring to go come the important games at the end of the season.

I have seen the Hull game on DVD and I was at the Widnes match, and we are in decent shape. We’ve got a few injuries, but it was good to see Keith Galloway and Stevie Ward back over Easter and Brad Singleton is available for tonight’s Cup game against Doncaster.

I thought we were very good against Hull and in the first half of Monday’s game. The second half was disappointing, but we haven’t been stressing too much about that.

At this time of year getting the two points is all-important. Only three teams got two wins over the Easter weekend and we were one of them, so we have to be happy.

Other results went our way as well, but I genuinely haven’t looked at the table.

Somebody told me we are second, which is obviously pleasing, but it doesn’t mean a lot at this stage.

We’ve played 11 rounds so there’s still 12 to go before the split and things can change very quickly.

The most important thing is we are making progress, that’s been obvious over the last few weeks, especially on attack.

We are scoring some good points now and our cohesion is getting better with every week so that is a good sign for the future, but it’s far too early to start getting carried away or talking about the top-four or anything like that.

It’s good to see Jack Walker, who’s just 17, in the 19-man squad for today’s game.

When I coached him in the under-16s he was somewhere between a half-back and full-back, but his real threat is his running game and we thought he was best suited as a No1.

He is very elusive and good on his feet and he’s also quite strong for his size. If he gets into open space he can beat people.

He’s similar to Ashton Golding when he first came through. He will need to develop physically, but the potential is definitely there.

He was 18th man on Monday and being in and around the squad will be good for him. If he gets a game tonight I’m sure he will enjoy the occasion and gain a lot from it.

Handley the centre of attention at Saints and a central figure for Leeds Rhinos